. The 700-page work has been translated into 18 languages, sold over 12 million copies and been revised numerous times since Hitler's death. Almost everyone knows of it, yet hardly anyone has actually read it.
is a book of paradoxes, famous yet unfamiliar - fascinating and repellant at the same time.
.....
But it remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.
All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X ~ James Murphy's translation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie .
...
Mein Kampf (
My Struggle or
My Fight) is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by
Nazi Party leader
Adolf Hitler.
....
Hitler originally wanted to call his forthcoming book
Viereinhalb Jahre (des Kampfes) gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit, or
Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.
Max Amann, head of the Franz Eher Verlag and Hitler's publisher, is said to have suggested the much shorter "Mein Kampf" or "My Struggle"....
The work describes the process by which Hitler became
antisemitic and outlines his
political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of
Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. The book was edited firstly by
Emil Maurice, then by Hitler's deputy
Rudolf Hess.
....
Hitler began
Mein Kampf while imprisoned for what he considered to be "political crimes" following
his failed Putsch in Munich in
November 1923. Although Hitler received many visitors initially, he soon devoted himself entirely to the book. As he continued, Hitler realized that it would have to be a two-volume work, with the first volume scheduled for release in early 1925. The governor of
Landsberg noted at the time that "he [Hitler] hopes the book will run into many editions, thus enabling him to fulfill his financial obligations and to defray the expenses incurred at the time of his trial." After slow initial sales, the book was a bestseller in Germany after
Hitler's rise to power in 1933.
After Hitler's death, copyright of
Mein Kampf passed to the state government of
Bavaria, which refused to allow any copying or printing of the book in Germany. In 2016, following the expiration of the copyright held by the Bavarian state government,
Mein Kampf was republished in Germany for the first time since 1945, which prompted public debate and divided reactions from Jewish groups.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf .
Ever since the early 1930s, the history of Adolf Hitler's
Mein Kampf in English has been complicated and has been the occasion for controversy. No fewer than
four full translations were completed
before 1945, as well as a number of
extracts in
newspapers, pamphlets, government documents and
unpublished typescripts. Not all of these had official approval from his publishers,
Eher Verlag. Since the war, the
1943 Ralph Manheim translation has been the most popular published translation, though other versions have continued to circulate.
...
Eher Verlag took steps to secure the
copyright and
trademark rights to
Mein Kampf in the United States in
1925 and
1927. In
1928 the literary agency
Curtis Brown, Limited secured the assignment for negotiation of translation rights in the United States and Great Britain, and a German copy was picked up by their employee,
Cherry Kearton. However, the firm found it
difficult to interest publishers in the 782-page book by the leader of what was then an
obscure splinter party in Germany. Even after the
elections of September 1930, when the
Nazi Party became the second largest party in the
Reichstag, publishers were cautious about investing in a translation, due to the
Great Depression.
The same election inspired
Blanche Dugdale to urge her husband,
E. T. S. Dugdale, to write an
abridgement of
Mein Kampf. Dugdale began his work on this abridgement in about
1931, but he, too, was unable to find a publisher for it. In
early 1933, at the time of the
Nazi seizure of power in Germany, Dugdale apparently got in touch with Eher Verlag, who put him into contact with Kearton, now working for the firm of
Hurst and Blackett. The latter firm was in the process of buying the translation rights from Curtis Brown for a sum of £350. Dugdale offered the abridgment to Hurst & Blackett free of charge, with the stipulation that his name not be used for the British edition. Before the book could go to press, however, Hurst and Blackett were visited by Dr.
Hans Wilhelm Thost, London correspondent of the
Völkischer Beobachter and an active member of the "Nazi organization" in London. Despite Eher Verlag's being satisfied with Dugdale's abridgement, Thost insisted on taking a copy to Berlin for further censoring and official sanction. The abridgement was finally published in
October 1933. Titled
My Struggle the book was published as the second number in the
Paternoster Library.
In the United States,
Houghton Mifflin secured the rights to the Dugdale abridgement on July 29, 1933. The only differences between the American and British versions are that the title was translated My Struggle in the UK and
My Battle in America; and that Dugdale is credited as translator in the US edition, while the British version withheld his name. The original price was $3.00.
In
January 1937, Houghton Mifflin issued a
second edition, the first having sold out. The price was lowered to $2.50. The publishers replaced the old dust jacket that featured Hitler giving his
salute over a
black and white background with a new one that featured panels of
black, red, and yellow and a quote from
Dorothy Thompson. This led to an official protest by the German government, as the
black-red-yellow color scheme was emblematic of the
liberal German revolutions of 1848–49 and the Weimar Republic, while the
Nazis had returned to the
black, white, red of the Second Reich.
Thomson's quote was also objected to, as she was
expelled from the Reich in 1934 after writing
unflattering accounts of Hitler. The affair lasted into
March 1937, with Houghton Mifflin agreeing to change the yellow to white, though it is unknown if the Dorothy Thompson quote was ever removed.
...
89,390 copies of the
Dugdale abridgment were sold in the
United Kingdom between 1933 and 1938.
There were three separate [
US] printings from August 1938 to March 1939, totaling 14,000; sales totals by March 31, 1939 were
10,345.
...
The
Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda commissioned
James Vincent Murphy, who had been employed to make English translations of Hitler's speeches and other items, to begin an English translation of
Mein Kampf in late 1936 and it was finished by the fall of 1937. However, the
Propaganda Ministry cancelled the project and
sequestered all copies of the manuscript. Murphy was beginning to be seen as "unreliable" by the government and was
dismissed from his position at the Ministry.
...
Murphy was convinced to
return to Germany to secure both a copy of the manuscript and permission to publish it, but on the date he was scheduled fly to Berlin. he was denied an
entry visa and told he would be wasting his time. Therefore, his wife, Mary, decided to make the trip, finally crossing the Channel on November 6,
1938. In Berlin she was unable to schedule any appointments with the Propaganda Ministry until November 10. This meant she was in Berlin during the
infamous Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9. The next day she met with
Heinrich Bohle at the Propaganda Ministry, but could not get anywhere. She pursued other contacts within the Ministry but came up empty handed. Finally, without any more money and living with her ex-house keeper, she decided to visit one of
James' former secretaries whom he had employed as a typist. To her great relief, she still had one of the
handwritten copies of the James Murphy translation. She left Berlin on
November 20 ['38].
...
Murphy's translation hit the stores in the United Kingdom on
March 20, 1939. ... Because so many records were destroyed during the war, accurate sales figures on Murphy's translation are difficult to establish. Robert Sommerfeld reported that
approximately 32,000 copies were sold by August 1939. There was also an illustrated edition and a serial edition in eight parts. It has been
conjectured that 150,000–200,000 copies were sold in total.
----
James Vincent
Murphy has been accused of translating the German word "
Hakenkreuz" (
Hooked Cross) which
Nazis called their symbol, as "
Swastika", a
Hindu religious symbol signifying prosperity and wellness. However,
in European and Indo-European tradition the
Swastika is the symbol of the
cyclic nature of time and space. The Swastika has been found throughout Europe and especially in
Scandinavian Bronze age inscriptions.
https://time.com/4161722/mein-kampf-hitler-germany/ .
